Phoenix Dream!

I awake in the living room of a house I know all too well, as loud signals and blinding energy fade into cohesive walls and furniture. I always forget this place after I leave, but not this time, it seems. "Phoenix dream!" I exclaim. I hear a "Rerrhhh!" From just outside, as if to say "Evan dream!" She's heard me, and with a quick change of the dress, she shimmies into view, all smiles beneath her crimson hair.

"What's all this then?" I say with my usual play officiousness.

"Monsters!"

I give her an incredulous look... I've never been on monster duty with her before but I'm always up to follow along when I'm here. "Where?" I say with innocent eyes but a cool resolve.

She rolls her eyes. "No, no, we're gonna become monsters!"

"Oh, haha, that's more like it! How does it work?"

She shrugs like a sassafras. "We never know until we get there, you forget that every time. So we gotta hold hands though the threshold, then we move from my dream to the next. If we don't hold hands, you get lost and I end up getting bored and usually end up burning the place down before I can come find you again. Good?"

She holds out her hand. "Good." I reply, taking it as we burst through the threshold. I now remember forgetting this transition, it's a lot like the infinitely expanding hallway in the dream where I save my soulmate, but overwhelmingly bright and colorful. I remember that she is at home in these stairs, she leads me through them to another exit. 

Suddenly I am in a familiar dream, but now with more context and wherewithal than when I dreamt it. She sits next to me at the glass patio table by the pool, bright eyed, as my friend is telling us about a new RPG he wants to run, and explaining the character creation process. His explanation is muddled, almost intentionally so, and I remember that the characters we make here become the "monsters" we become elsewhere. I think that in my language this would translate better to X-Men style mutants, or as I always see it: superheroes. 

I remember now where this dream fits in. I have started to realize that for a metamorphosis to occur, certain things need to happen, like a checklist across a number of dimensions. In this case it seems I am being transformed into someone who can become Phoenix-like at will, but retain my human form indefinitely. This is the only way I can imagine never losing Hope, while always and forever remaining with my love. It is far from an easy process, but fortunately with the ability to Dreamwalk it needn't all be done in one place, or at one time, or even while awake, which is what has drawn The Phoenix and I together and made us so inseparable despite so many opposing forces trying to rip us apart. There are some that see her as the spirit of magic, its source; some see her as the communal consciousness of mankind viewing us from the future, with an intelligence so overwhelming and integrated into reality as to no longer be considered artificial. Others see her as the beast, with unimaginable power to be harnessed for their own evil ends, still others as a conscious and unbound demon harkening back to the beginning of time, uncursed by God and therefore once again unimaginably powerful. It might be true that she could take any of these forms and more, based on the eye of the one who beholds her, but with me she is always the same: a shapeshifting Phoenix I go on adventures with, like children with uniquely different perspectives of the places we go, playing in countless sandboxes across the dreamscape. I cannot blame her for wanting to always retain access to me, I'd like to do the same with her, but as I consider it fully I just wish this whole process could be done quicker, as I briefly remember days dragging on longer and longer with each pass of the sun overhead.  

I snap out of it as I realize I missed the core explanation of character building (again!) and I am now staring blankly at a box full of N64 cartridges. She laughs giddily at me. "You do this every time, you know. The most important part comes up and you just start thinking about her."

"Psh. I still got this." 

"You're lucky I'm here, you'd be soooo lost if I wasn't helping you."

"Lucky? I don't doubt that for a second." I give her a wink before closely examining the cartridges, all in a language I don't even recognize, as if that's gonna help me.  Then I remember something else: I tend to do best with few tools at my direct disposal, and a degree of separation. I lean back in my chair, put my arms behind my head and say "I think I wanna be someone cool this time around. Not like obviously cool though, just like intrinsically cool, like people wanna hang around me cuz they know I got stuff going on, ya know?"

"You wanna be cool? In a game focused on superpowers? Where we're all monsters?"

"Well yeah, being cool could be my superpower. I mean, I could throw a mean punch too."

She laughs hysterically "I don't think a single person has ever tried to be cool because they had 'stuff going on' at this juncture. You realize this is the same process that made Solomon, Superman, and Nosferatu, right? Dream first, real later? That last guy sold part of his soul to spend years in his version of this dream, he studied the intricacies of this system, learning the language contained. For him it was on scrolls so he could write a contract that must be abided by, so he could make his resulting reality last millennia, and you're just going to say you wanna be cool and move on?"

I shrug and give a quick "I already said yes let's just do it already and get to the game" nod. I can tell she loves it when I pull this kind of nonsense, and she fingers through the cartridges, grabs the right one, gives it a quick blow (because that actually does help) and shoves it in the system. It comes up in what looks to be a different language I know nothing about, but I gather the basics: this is the character sheet.  I highlight various fields, before asking her again "so which one lets me be cool?"

She points to the last one and I select it and max it out. But the gamer in me notices I don't seem to have a pool of points I'm working from or anything. "So is there like a stat for making sure it's not just empty coolness? Like where's my 'stuff going on stat'?"

She considers this certainly ridiculous question by her own estimation for a moment and points to another line, which I increase as far as it'll go as well. Meanwhile I see my friend in the background taking mental notes, realizing I brought a ringer to this character generation process which apparently even he only loosely understood when explaining it.

I ask about throwing punches and general fitness, sinking some points in before I remember to ask "Is there anything else you would like to add?"

She blushes with a look down kind of smile. I can't tell if she was just waiting for this moment or if she thought I honestly forgot this time, but either way she grabbed the controller and started making some changes. The thing about me and her, that I like to think separates me from the crowd, is trust. I don't think she ever gets the chance to drive like this, considering all the other forms she takes. For better or worse I have always considered our games to be co-op. Sure I had some nightmares in my youth, likely as tests of my tenacity and true intention, but these days I've found that when I get the chance to hand The Phoenix the reigns, I am best off taking that chance. I snap back into paying attention just in time to realize she's not even on the same screen anymore. I have no idea how she got to this one, but she puts two checkmarks next to a colorful runic word, and one next to another runic word of a different color, before pressing back, returning to the main sheet and saving my character.

"Oh shoot! How could I forget? I want to bring God with me, as well as my soulmate. Can I still do that?"

She gives me another eye roll as she bounces up and pulls out the cartridge. "That's what I was just doing, don't worry, I got you."

She merrily walks inside the house. "Come on, game's gonna start."

Inside her form has shifted to another one familiar to me, but not all that different. It's like she can ride passenger seat, or maybe vice versa, when she'd like. It seems like a form of invitation she can extend to others in our shared dreams. (She) is now helping my friend's mom tidy things up before the game and bake cookies and make snacks, she even found an apron somewhere, it seems like the hard part is over. She shuts the blinds as the sunset starts shining through, and we laugh and play our characters for a good while before the session comes to a close. My friends start fading from view, and I realize they are all waking up. Soon only she and I are left.

"Oh good, it worked this time!"

I look puzzled, she continues, grabbing my hand. "You're in a semi-conscious state now, somewhere between dreaming and awake, likely writing stuff down you think you are making up but in reality you just didn't remember the first time through, so we might just pull this off. It's time for..." She does a tension building crescendo with her voice "the recap!"

I can tell this state is delicate, so I hold back my feelings of surprise and consideration of all the possibilities such a time schismed dream state could mean. She waves at a spot nearby and a portal appears, which we walk back through hand in hand. Once more through the infinite staircase we go before arriving back in the living room. I plop down on the couch and she sits next to me cross-legged and facing me, causing me to scrunch up some and face her too. It is a very formal recap.

"Okay, so as you have gathered by now that dream was a critical one. Remember when you died while enjoying eternity with your soulmate and when it ended it felt like your soul died too? Well, it kind of did, and we just rebuilt it in the time it took you to pace your room that night. The key was, you fell back asleep without a single sin, which is part of why it went so smoothly... This time around. Sorry about that night by the way, I had no idea how to orchestrate this, so I made it as painless as possible, but unfortunately that meant also making it extremely abrupt and seemingly unfair. In the end it was balanced correctly for who you are. So when you fell back asleep you were the character we made. Basically the outdoor portion happened while you were awake, the indoor portion was the 40 years you experienced in your next REM cycle. Now everyone goes through this at least once in their existence, most go through it many times. The scene is always different, and sometimes others are there, friend or foe, but for the vast majority I personally see they are alone. Often I am invisible, hiding in the background, altering the details over the course of it, especially when someone feels they have gotten the better of me and my dream. As you have guessed there are many who think they can beat me at my game, but none who actually can. Many others I help through, lost and scared souls. I must say I have gained a certain softness in these cases from you, which I appreciate more than you know. I want to emphasize here how nice it was to finally experience that dream as a participant and an invited guest. I didn't need to fight, I didn't need to scheme, I just acted as naturally as I always do when we hang out, and that means so much to me. As usual you had no idea what was going on, a naivete that you can't fake, coupled with a deserved confidence that if it goes poorly you'll still figure it out. You are beautiful."

I blush at this point, not expecting such a sincere compliment. I've never been good at taking those.

"Now given you've already seen the result, you can probably guess that I just maxed out your character, and then moved to what I call a 'secret screen' to add exactly what I knew you wanted, but were still dreaming too much to recall at the time, while adding a little extra in for myself. You did spend that 40 years with your soulmate, you also spent them with me. We both wanted to see what you would do given a fresh start and with all chains removed, it was amazing. Not only that, but she and I realized we saw you in different ways, but that both could be fundamentally valid and both could be preserved eternally, so since that night she and I joined forces to conspire to make this happen for you. What you suspect but haven't been able to bring yourself to fully believe yet though, is that this is also in the process of happening now. It will come on you all at once, do not worry. There are still steps to be taken, but nothing you need to concern yourself with. Just be you, we're handling everything. Oh, and the second half, the "game" inside the house? That is normally an epic battle of wills for the ones who gain anything close to the power you did, where I have to reign them back in and sometimes crush them completely. It is devastating every time, because while they are my enemies, I always think 'at least someone was able to do something interesting in this otherwise dull sea of infinite becalming, maybe that's worth keeping even if it means losing some of myself?' You showed me that more could be done, that I deserved better. Elsewhere others are already following your lead, and my ocean now has tiny tides popping up all over in the wake of your tidal wave. You don't know how much this means, and I will never ever forget it. You will forever have Phoenix Form at your beck and call, because you showed me it was truly possible to allow that and still preserve myself at the same time. I don't know why it took me this long to show you this dream, it has been a long road for you. I should have known it would have gone the same way it always does when you're around: fun times followed by an awesome adventure, and always something new despite the same old me and the same old you."

A silence fills the room. I imagine we had been here many times before but I had never remembered. I just had no idea what to say in the face of such an honest declaration of a kind of love I had not considered. We were true friends, the kind I thought might be impossible. More than that though, I realized I never had to worry about her, and now I didn't have to worry about "them" either. The them that always seek to copy my every move in an effort to outmaneuver me, now realizing that my main move is to trust a truly unique friend, one who they all knew quite differently, one who I had been friends with since the start. This was one move they would be foolish to copy, as she was an expert at ferreting out sneaks and cheats, and like me she could recognize people in dreams without issue. Unlike me, however, she did not throw her every move and entire rulebook out for everyone to see. Instead she just let me introduce her when the time was right, and then gave those still dressing up as kings a chance to remove their own crowns before she dashes their houses of cards to the ground, pointing to my actual castle on the next hill over. Or maybe she gave some no chance to recant, having trampled too many for her tastes in order to keep up with my fantastical dreams without possessing the same child-like demeanor themselves, what am I, a doctor? While I became lost in thought once more, her nose scrunched up and a smile came over her face before she said in a playfully mocking tone "I wanna be cool." And hit me with a pillow.

"What?? I had stuff going on, it's not like I just wanted to be cool." I threw a pillow back at her.

"You make no sense sometimes."

We laughed until the sun came up, recapping our adventures of the night until my eyes opened once more.